Pension Poll (11/16/12)

-The latest Crain's poll shows that the majority of residents in Illinois say local school districts, not the state, should pay the cost of local teacher pensions. That comes as expert say the unfunded liability in Illinois pension plans is roughly 85 billion dollars and, well, Chicago is the only community in the state that pays retirement cost for its own teachers. Joining me with more on the poll is our Greg Hinz. Greg, what kind of questions first of all and answers were available in this poll. I mean, you wonder how much people really know about how deep the pension deficit is. -Well. you have a plight a lot of people don't do very well with numbers, practically really big numbers like 83, 85 or whatever that is. It's probably more than that, but this has been in the papers in awful a lot. There'd been all kinds of warnings about what's gonna happen. We have a big tax increase. We are all paying largely because of that. So, people ought to know enough to at least review some of the options, which is essentially what the questions asked. -Right, and they are saying they want the people who spend the money to put it in retirement here. Let us recap as far as the sticking points for democrats or republicans who seem just sort of being odds on thing of how should work. Where's that stand? -Well, little by little, the democrat seemed to have come along to the belief that we got to do something even though doing something means you're gonna stick it to their union allies, but the republicans are all for that. They don't have problems left around this, but the democrats put in with could be viewed as piece of pill. They wanna pass on the cost teacher pensions, which is a big part of this to local school districts so that they have to pay money like City of Chicago pays. Republicans say this is terrible, gonna force some property taxes with their might, and they say hey, if you're gonna make do this, give us some of that extra money to Chicago schools just because of the poverty count. So, it's become kind of a circular firing squad, but they have to do something. -In the meantime, the general assembly is expected to discuss this, meet on this lame duck session in January. Any indication that something if anything will get done one way or other? -I don't think there any doubt they're gonna pass something and call attention to fund. The question is how real is it? How much of the following will take care? That's still much up in the air. -Big questions ahead. Alright Greg, thanks a lot. -You're welcome.